06.27.2021 05:31 PM

McKenna

I liked her. She made mistakes, but she also had guts – and she put up with an enormous amount of sexist bullshit.

I suspect we haven’t heard the last of her, however.

30 Comments

  1. Peter Williams says:

    Perhaps Ms McKenna got sick and tired of working for an unprincipled fake feminist dufus.

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Peter,

      Sorry, that’s not it. You see, when you actually get tired of that, you leave immediately, like right after JWR, JP and CCC.

      Of course, you can still go with better late than never, unless you happen to be CF and all of the pathetic others…

    • irreversible road map to freedom says:

      Her presence in Cabinet after Lavscam and Blackface x 3 automatically eliminates her as a leadership contestant or credible candidate for any future public office. She’s an enabler and that’s it.

      • Ronald O'Dowd says:

        IRMTF,

        Everyone already knows it’ll be a two person race: Saint Carney vs. Wobbly Freeland. And we all know how that one will play out. The fix is already in and it’s not for Chrystia. Liberals love power far too much to risk going with her. Far too much Trudeau baggage.

  2. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    I refuse to compromise or surrender under the Madeleine Albright Doctrine. She got it 1000% right as poor Kamala is likely to find out in 2024. (Doubt very much that Joe will have the health to actually seek re-election but we’ll see.)

    My late Mom, bless her soul, used to refer to them as ThoseCattyJealousBitchesTM. My Mom was a GENUINE feminist.

    • The Doctor says:

      Albright was quite correct to point out that women are often much more vicious to one another (especially verbally) than men are to women. And to acknowledge that clearly observable fact is not to deny that sexism exists. Of course that’s a somewhat nuanced point so naturally it flies over the heads of many people. Social media in particular is the very death of nuance.

      Albright was also quite correct to point out that adults in general are often just as petty, juvenile and vicious to one another as high schoolers. And of course as adults we’re supposed to have more of this thing called empathy. Sadly many adults do not.

  3. Ken Newman says:

    Good riddance to the scolding, shrieking, obnoxious and know nothing Liberal

  4. Robert White says:

    MP McKenna was a force for good within the Liberal Party and caucus. She is a strong advocate for gender parity in Parliament and I will miss her professionalism around Ottawa.

    Not surprised to see the shuffle.

    And Warren is right about the sexist remarks she had to put up with as a feminist MP/Liberal.

    RW

  5. Chris N says:

    I wanna see a Freeland vs. Carney civil war a la Martin and Copps.

  6. Doug says:

    She was a poor communicator:

    “Like climate change is like totally bad”

    I agree the online and physical vitriol faced by politicians, and especially by McKenna, is completely inappropriate. That being said, has she really been that much more of a target than Michelle Rempel Garner?

  7. Gilbert says:

    Catherine McKenna is far too left wing for me.

  8. Phil in London says:

    Warren, Warren Warren – it has come to my attention you have used an offensive term, please it is GENDERISM Not sexism.
    You cannot possibly express yourself as a sanctimonious hand-wringing acolyte to the dear leader if you can’t gloss over the issue with a new label that says nothing other than “look at me I care”.
    You also are at serious risk of being excommunicated not only from the Liberal cult but now the Catholic Church…. You start using words like sexism and people will start thinking people are, er, well having sex. That simply cannot be discussed.
    To the issue of gender parity there ain’t none, but I really struggle with this one being a shining example I think there is a lot of ink to be spilled on Carney as a legitimate star meteorite destined to crash to earth like Martin, Dion and Ignatieff before them.
    I’m not inside the mind of the haters but I think a lot of people viewed here as an extremist on climate change and dedication to the party and leader at all costs. That has nothing to do with her gender.

    There will always be some asshole who thinks he can score a good shot with calls for women in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant thinking but Margaret Thatcher, Sheila Copps, Audrey McLauglin, Elisabeth May, Kim Campbell and Angela Merkel probably had a bit of that to deal with as well.

    This is a former star minister whose lustre has faded and the possibilities for Liberals with hardons for Carney is irresistible.

    • Robert White says:

      Margaret Thatcher milk snatcher was not a feminist before her time. She was a functionary Neocon and partner to Ronald Reagan’s neoliberalism hatched out of the Chicago School of Economics which is now a defunct school of thought reeling from global embarrassment via serial failure since 08’s Lehman debacle where ‘the gorilla of Wall Street’ leveraged Lehman BROTHERS 44:1 on a long bet that the Dons of Oxford University were asleep at the wheel.

      Carney & Freeland are both Oxford grads. Canada panders to Oxford University Dons of Economics that know absolutely nothing about Macroeconomics, or marcoprudential policy.

      RW

      • The Doctor says:

        It’s a tad bit reductionist to blame the entire 2007-08 financial crisis on the Chicago School of Economics. I agree that you can lay considerable blame on certain financial deregulatory moves. However, to cite one contrarian example, subprime mortgage lending was touted by many progressives and left-leaning politicians and commentators as a progressive policy to encourage home ownership among poor and working-class people.

        • Robert White says:

          The Great Depression era Glass-Steagall Act kept depository banking separated from proprietary investment banking for 66 years before the Neoliberal era adherents of Milton Friedman’s Trickledown Economics overtly over-leveraged 44:1 to implode the FDIC marquee investment banks on Wall Street in September of 08.

          Subprime Mortgage Backed Securities in the Residential & Commercial lines of MBS imploded FDIC insured banks in 08 because the Securities & Exchange Commission under Christopher Cox allowed the top five investment banks to increase their leverage as high as 44:1 in the case of Lehman Brothers Inc.

          Dr. Brooksley Born warned Congress prior to the implosion that American taxpayers were at risk in the derivatives markets all due to the fact that the entire derivatives market is unregulated and dark/opaque to regulatory oversight of any sort.

          Brooksley Born’s prescient warning prior to the 08 implosion of the Western Fractional Reserve Banking System was premised upon the underwriting standards of the banks that had dismissed systemic risk system wide due to the financial alchemists of banking that mistakenly thought that financial risks had been de-risked via interbank loans and interbank connectivity whereby risks were pooled, assessed, and ameliorated via the dark pool derivatives universe.

          In constructing this charade of borrowing via debt issuance of investment banks & depository banks the whole system of banking was structurally weakened via the investment banks who were pushing debt off their balance sheets into the unregulated & dark market of the derivatives universe so that individual banks could keep increasing their loan portfolios without worry about systemic risks to any one bank as all were supposedly de-risked via credit default swaps on bad loans made with too lax underwriting standards specifically in the subprime MBS category for both Residential MBS & Commercial MBS respectively.

          In brief, lobby groups such as ACORN were advocating for lax standards in terms of MBS underwriting because people like John Paulson wanted more loans to package into securities as he was making a king’s ransom on those lines of securities until 08 when Lehman Brothers & Bear Stearns over-leveraged up to 44:1 on RMBS & CMBS.

          There is nothing ‘progressive’ about regressive underwriting standards of the Securities & Exchange Commission. Banking fraud is NOT a business model worthy of emulating.

          RW

          • Phil in London says:

            After about 300 unrelated points on Thatcher’s politics you made my point. LOTS of women have succeeded under many political banners, this women did not, because it wasn’t about being a woman but about being a blind devotee to the cult leader.

      • Doug says:

        Thatcher was post-feminist. She succeeded because she was aggressive, assertive, disciplined and informed. Her gender had no bearing. I’m generally not one to admire political speeches or debates, but some of the few that actually created an impression came from Thatcher, for example “The Lady’s not for turning”. When she sparred, her opponents inside and outside her party usually cowered in the corner.

  9. Fred J Pertanson says:

    I cannot un-see that picture of her posing for a photo op on a bicycle with a helmet and high heels. No wonder she was called Barbie.

    I couldn’t stand her. She was obnoxious.

    • Doug says:

      I can’t stand her either. She represents the worst of the Liberal Party:
      -image over substance
      -technocratic biases that dramatically over estimate the government’s ability to change society or the economy
      -condescending demeanour towards anyone who presents alternate points of view

      Despite satisfaction from seeing another phony Liberal star candidate bite the dust, I regret the abuse she faced. She provided her oponents with plenty of fodor on the policy, communication and execution fronts. They didn’t need to go low.

      • Fred J Pertanson says:

        Good comment. Yes, the abuse was bad. I think she could have avoided some of it by not posting fake pictures of her cycling, though.

        Going low is never good, always take the high ground.

        • Doug says:

          Singh posed for cycling pictures wearing one of his many high end suits. That screams inauthenticity to me, but I’m not a Laurentian or a Millennial, so maybe others perceive such displays differently.

          Regardless, nobody deserves the kind of abuse faced by McKenna. Again, I am happy to see her go but at the same time wonder if the dearth of political leadership across the board is at least partially due to high quality candidates not wanting to face the social media troll brigade.

  10. Phil in London says:

    Call me cynical but this announcement also tells me no election till after the 6th anniversary of her pension enrolment

  11. Peter Williams says:

    Where’s the infrastructure money?

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Peter,

      They’re keeping it in reserve right up until the inflation- adjusted wheelbarrows arrive en masse!

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